Generally, forming systems for making composite products employ formers herein the strands are deposited onto a forming surface to form a mat of strands on the surface (e.g. a caul plate or the like) that is used in the subsequent pressing or consolidating stage to form the surface on the consolidated product.
In making fiberboard wood fibers (as opposed to wood strands) are cast into the air and deposited on a forming surface by gravity or possibly by suction through the forming surface. See for example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,880,975 issued Apr. 29, 1975 to Lundmark. This technique, i.e. condensing of the material into a mat using a vacuum on the side of the forming wire remote from the supply of material, is applied to form fibrous mats from wood fibers, i.e. very small elements (fibers) relative to strand as used in manufacture of strand board products. Each strand, for example, is composed of thousands of fibers bonded together in their natural state.
The fibers used in the manufacture of fiber board are liberated by some form of mechanical disintegration technique e.g. grinding or refining or chemical technique to separate discrete fibers from one another. In fiberboard manufacture the fibers generally are randomly oriented, though it has been suggested to use electrostatic forces to orient the fibers.
In the manufacture of strand board the strands are dispensed from a source of supply, e.g. a bin, and simply fall onto a collecting surface and depending on the process may or may not be oriented. When an oriented strand board (OSB) is made the strands are oriented to be reasonably parallel to an axis of the consolidated product. See for example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,115,431 issued Dec. 24, 1963 to Stokes et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 4,380,285 issued Apr. 19, 1983 to Burkner et al.; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,325,954 issued Jul. 5, 1994 to Crittenden et al. or U.S. Pat. No. 5,487,460 issued Jan. 30, 1996 to Barnes, all of which show different devices for laying mats for consolidation wherein the strands are oriented before they pass on to the mat so that the mat contains oriented strands.
A plurality of separate forming heads are generally used to each to form a layer of strands directly onto the surface of a preceding layer of strands to form a lay-up that will consist of at least several such layers formed directly one on top of the other. Each of the layers will be several strand thicknesses' thick and the combined lay-up will be at least about 7 or 8 strand thickness thick.
It will be apparent that in each of these forming systems, the mat or lay-up formed generally consists of a plurality of strands or fibers piled one on top of the other to form a lay-up mat many strands (or fibers) thick so that the resultant consolidated product produced form from such a strand lay-up mat will have a thickness of at least a quarter inch which corresponds for conventional strandboard forming lay-up mat of about 7 strand thickness (assuming about 30% compression of strands 0.05 inches thick).
As above indicated this strand lay-up mat is made using a plurality of forming heads so that each head produces a layer of about 2 to 4 strands thick.
It is necessary to make consolidated composite products from a plurality of strand layers i.e. form by a plurality of forming heads forming layers one directly on the top of the other because of the inability of the previously known laying processes to form the mat or lay-up of say a single layer thickness with a sufficiently uniform weight distribution over the area of the consolidated product i.e. when the thickness of the layup being consolidated is too small.